Quotes About Self-examination

Life is like a mirror, what you see out there, you must first see what is inside you.

But what are our stories if not the mirrors we hold up to our fears?

We must admit that very often we are afraid or ashamed to look at our own minds. So we prefer to avoid it. One should be bold and sincere and look at one's own mind as one looks at one's face in a mirror.

We have met the enemy and it is us.

I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

if you are in a situation or difficulty, you can make a U-turn; instead of putting the blame on something outside or on someone else, look within yourself to see how you have contributed to the problem, and then find a way to restore peace to the situation.

If we treat Socrates as an internalized feature of the mind, then this is its first and constant order of business: uprooting false conceits of knowledge.

If you want to take your own measure, put aside your money, your estates, your honors, and look inside yourself. At present you are taking the word of others for what you are. Seneca, Epistles 80.10

Our criticisms of others therefore have a side benefit. They provide an unintentional glimpse at what is ugliest within us.

If we throw ourselves open to God, He will reveal. The trouble comes when we have closed areas, locked and barred places in our hearts, where we think, with pride, that we are right.

How frequently do you look in the mirror? Does your face please you? Are you disgusted to detect familial features? Do you worship or hate your ancestors? Do you consider your image erotic? Do you pretend that you are a star's child? If you squint, does your reflection become abstract? Is abstraction a transcendental escape from identity or a psychotic spasm of depersonalization?

Questioning what we believe and want is difficult at the best of times

Of course it didn't prove anything of the sort, it merely showed that self-examination disturbs the personality, deflects the will, and zaps the mind; it proved that no one, seen clearly from the outside, resembles themselves at all.

I pulled the rearview down and looked at myself in the mirror for a spell, trying to spot virtues.

The question for each of us is one of housekeeping. Are there attitudes or actions we have allowed to take root in our life that are keeping us from the pursuit of holiness?

What goes on around you … compares little with what goes on inside you. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Vipassana involves genuinely looking at who and what you are, actually seeing the real self instead of the one we imagine ourselves to be. It means facing every fear, every unsated desire, every area where we just don't know a part of ourselves, and then releasing any claim on them. It's been shown to be effective in treating depression, anxiety, panic, just about every emotional disorder there is, and it does so by removing the importance of our emotions from our lives.

Only one who is self-aware can question her own self-awareness.

That favorite subject, Myself.

Agenbite of inwit. Conscience.

God's Word is especially suited to directing those who want to focus primarily on the nature and direction of their own hearts.

Twice a day, or at least once, make your particular examens. Be careful never to omit them. So live as to make more account of your own good conscience than you do of those of others; for he who is not good in regard to himself, how can he be good in regard to others?

We are all of us, to some degree or another, brainwashed by the society we live in. We are able to see this when we travel to another country, and are able to catch a glimpse of our own country with foreign eyes.. the best we can hope for is that a kindly friend from another culture will enable us to look at our culture with dispassionate eyes.

Looking back over nearly a quarter of a century, she saw that that had been the characteristic of her life -passivity, adaptability to others.